Donald Revell

I take American poetry to be a fact neither of history nor dialect nor geography, but of a present activity, activity articulated best but not first by Henry David Thoreau as "the gospel according to this moment." I am thus permitted to imagine an American poetic tradition that includes Heraclitus and The Sermon on the Mount. My own hope is that my lines reach towards their natal wildness enfaithed in such action as this, from Charles Olson's Maximus:

it is change, no moreand yet no less is
the edge of
the discrimination
wielded: causeis not the equal of,
the error of,act